COPPER 2.09 ‘Think Gently of the Erring’

The girls are getting in all kinds of trouble this week and Annie Riley isn’t even in Five Points. While the men plot away on things both admirable and sinister, the lady folk down opium, stir up fights with produce vendors and stab bar patrons in the eye. That’s not to say the latter two weren’t deserved, however.

Eva (Franka Potente) isn’t one to back down from a threat, so when a man named Ramsey gets fresh with Lola, she gives him an eyeful with his own knife. The act gets the very pregnant madam thrown in the "tomb," facing a possible death sentence should Ramsey die from his wounds.

Uptown, Robert Morehouse (Kyle Schmid) awaits a meeting with a doctor from his alma mater in hopes of getting Freeman’s tract on Five Points' contaminated water published. Unfortunately, it’s a drunk and high Elizabeth (Anastasia Griffith) who greets the doctor. He finds her lack of decorum offensive and makes an angry exit just as Morehouse arrives. The incident is enough to make Morehouse insist Elizabeth give up opium, at least for a little while. Of course, we know that’s not going to happen and she quickly buys an even more potent strain from a dealer.

While Elizabeth’s drug habit worsens, it’s hard to say exactly why. She managed to avoid prosecution in the Kennedy trial and Robert seems to have gotten over it, as well. There’s got to be more to Elizabeth’s addiction than the opium itself to make this an interesting storyline.

As for Eva, she tells General Donovan (Donal Logue) he’s the father of her unborn child. The General takes the news in stride and promises to work on Eva’s defense. But when Ramsey is murdered in his hospital bed, after Freeman’s positive prognosis, Eva faces a murder charge. It’s likely Donovan (who’s become Five Point’s puppet master) is behind it

One thing we do know is that Francis Maguire (Kevin Ryan) may have pretended to be a gangster thug before, but now he’s the real deal under Donovan. When Lansing makes a move against the General in their war over the aqueduct contract, the General has Maguire bury the competition – alive. He also has Maguire intercept Teresa Trembley, the witness to Alderman Bartlett’s murder that Corky (Tom Weston-Jones) reached out to. He tasks Maguire with helping Teresa get settled into her safe house, unbeknownst to Corky.

And the tense state of affairs continues at the Freeman home. After Hattie (Alfre Woodward) mouths off at a street vendor when he makes racist remarks, Matthew (Ato Essandoh) loses his temper and assaults the man. It’s not the kind of person he wants to be, Matthew tells Sara (Tessa Thompson), and he worries about Hattie’s inability to cope with city life. And there’s also the matter of her possibly finding out the truth about her the murder of her sons.

As the season’s events come to a head, it’s not hard to imagine where we’ll leave things in Five Points. Both the Morehouse and Freeman households are on the verge of implosion and General Donovan’s using any means necessary to secure his stranglehold on Five Points. A showdown between Corky and the General is inevitable, but how will Eva factor into it? And who is the real father of her baby? As long as it’s not Maguire…